Tyrant: King of the Bosporus

by Christian Cameron

  ‘Get in,’ she said.

  ‘I could—’ he began.

  ‘You could get us all killed. Now get in.’ She held the lid and he climbed in, clutching his sword between his hands. He just fitted, with his ankles pulled almost under his head. The position hurt, and it hurt even more a few minutes later, when the screams in the courtyard began.

  The next hour was the longest, and worst, of Satyrus’s life. His curse was that he could hear everything. He heard the men in the courtyard, the mime’s voice mocking Penelope, the soldiers spreading out to search, the sounds of breaking crockery. He heard himself betrayed by the old slave up the road, and by the blood and offal he’d left cleaning the rabbit.

  He heard the clown voice threaten Talkes, and he heard the same voice threaten to sell Penelope into slavery.

  ‘Or I could give you what your father got, stupid woman. Where is he? Where is he?’ The man sounded honestly angry.

  ‘Do as you will,’ Penelope said. ‘When Lysimachos comes, you are a dead man.’

  ‘All you dirt farmers sound the same sad song. Look, slut, your precious satrap is not coming. I’m lord here now. Eumeles is king of the Euxine and I’ll be archon here. Want me to burn the house? Tell me where this man is.’ The sing-song voice sounded unnatural, like a priest or an oracle.

  ‘Nothing in the barns!’ shouted another man, deeper voiced.

  ‘Search the upstairs – the exedra. Slash every mattress and dump the loom. Everything!’ clown-voice said.

  ‘Two slave girls in the cellar. No men.’ Another deep voice, this with the accent of the Getae.

  ‘Let’s see ’em!’ came a shout, and then there were hoots, catcalls. More broken crockery and the sound of screams, and two men were in the exedra with him, searching. He could hear them poking around, he could smell the results as they broke a perfume jar. And below, he could hear Teax being raped – catcalls, sobs.

  ‘May all of you rot from inside! May pigs eat your eyes!’ Penelope screamed.

  ‘Shut up, bitch, or you’ll be next.’ A laugh, and more laughing.

  ‘I want a piece of that,’ said a voice near his box.

  His knees burned like fire and his sense of his own cowardice rose like the fumes of wine to fill his head. If I were worth a shit, I would rise from this box and kill my way through these men or die trying, he thought. He clutched his borrowed sword, prepared to kill the man who opened the chest.

  ‘Athena’s curse on you, man with the voice of a woman!’ Penelope’s voice, strained with rage and terror, carried clearly. ‘May your innards rot. May you never know the love of a woman. May jackals root in your innards while you still have eyes to see. May worms eat your eyes. May all your children die before you.’

  Teax screamed again.

  ‘Why are we up here? The fucker’s long gone – if he was ever here.’ The deeper voice kicked the box where Satyrus lay.

  Penelope screamed.

  ‘Burn it,’ clown-voice said in the courtyard. ‘Kill them all. Stupid fucking peasants.’

  They lit the roof, but the beams never caught, and Satyrus crept from his box and dragged himself, his legs unusable, down the stairs to the courtyard, heedless of the danger. But poor as they were at arson, they were skilled at killing. Penelope lay in a black pool of blood, so fresh that it glittered in the fitful light of the burning roof, and Teax lay naked. The look on her face – the horror, the terror, the loss of hope – burned itself into his brain. He closed her eyes, fouling his legs with her blood, and he threw his good wool chlamys over her.

  Talkes was still alive. Someone had rammed a spear right through his guts, but he was alive when Satyrus found him.

  ‘Killed!’ Talkes said. ‘All killed!’ His eyes met Satyrus. ‘You lived.’

  Satyrus nodded. ‘I did,’ he said, feeling wretched.

  Talkes nodded. ‘I – want to live, too.’ He nodded again, and died.

  Satyrus thought of burying them all, or putting their bodies in the farmhouse and burning it. Both were gestures he couldn’t afford. When his legs would function, he gathered his spear from the entry way and ran off across the orchards towards the coast. Inside his head, he was walling himself off from the image of Teax. He’d done it before, with the girl he’d killed by the Tanais River, with the feeling that he’d abandoned Philokles to die at Gaza. He knew just how to push that image down to concentrate his fear and his hate on one end.

  Revenge.

  PROPONTIS, EARLY WINTER, 311 BC

  Two cold camps, because Sarpax, the navarch, didn’t fancy showing fires. They rowed up the Propontis into the teeth of a strong autumn wind and passed Byzantium at first light, rowing hard, so that the oarsmen grumbled. They parted with their convoy there and continued north.

  Melitta could only think of how much she missed her son. Her breasts were heavy with milk, and they alone served to keep Kineas on her mind all the time – milk so plentiful that it hurt her, and every time she considered donning her armour she flinched from the thought. The lightest brush of fabric on her nipples started the flow again, so that she lived in a perpetual state of embarrassment and her chitons were all stained with milk and the biting wind froze her nipples.

  So much for the great adventure of her life. She missed her son, and she played no role at all in the ship, except to watch the horizon and worry.

  And miss her son.

  Nihmu was little help. She stood in the bow, watching the sea, smelling the air like a dog, scrutinizing every ship they passed as if Leon might be aboard.

  It was Nihmu who spotted the patrol ship, just as the water changed colour and the high banks of the Propontis fell away on either side. She came back, her leather boots scuffing the deck.

  ‘Trireme,’ she said. ‘Just on the horizon.’

  Coenus went forward with the navarch and came back shaking his head. ‘He’s got the wind,’ Coenus said. ‘And he’s coming for a closer look.’

  Sarpax joined him. ‘Ladies, into the tabernacle, if you please. Serve out weapons. Gentlemen,’ he said, as the ship’s officers gathered, ‘we will act as if we’re willing to be boarded until I give the word. The word is “attack”. If I give the word, do your best to kill them. The truth is – once they’re alongside us, we have more marines. Eh? But if ever they break away, we are all dead men. Eh?’ Sarpax’s oiled moustache gleamed like the pearl he wore in his right ear.

  ‘I can shoot,’ Nihmu said. She grinned at Idomeneus. ‘Better than him.’

  ‘Me, too!’ Melitta blurted.

  ‘Take your bows to the tabernacle, then,’ Sarpax said. ‘No archery before I say. Quickly now! If they want a quick peek below decks, we all look as innocent as lambs.’

  Melitta opened the hatch cover in the forward bulkhead of the tabernacle – the small, enclosed space just under the bow, the only closed space on a ship as small as a trade pentekonter. Through that narrow aperture, she saw the other ship closing on the opposite tack, her great square sail drawing with all the wind that had forced curses from the rowers for five days.

  ‘Heave to!’ the other ship called. ‘What ship?’

  ‘Who says?’ Sarpax roared. ‘Tunny, fifteen days out of Rhodos.’

  ‘Heave to!’ the other commander called. ‘I’m coming under your lee.’

  The trireme got her mainsail down neatly enough, although they made a hash of closing the last few boat-lengths to come alongside.

  ‘Throw me a grapple!’ the other man called.

  Melitta could hear Sarpax mutter something as he ordered a grapple thrown across. Then he ordered another.

  ‘Who are you?’ Sarpax roared.

  ‘Wasp, of Pantecapaeum. In service to the king of the Bosporus. Now stand clear – I’m coming across!’

  Melitta couldn’t see a thing, but the pentekonter was so small that she could feel as six men crossed, the smaller boat rolling and shaking as each new weight came aboard.

  ‘What cargo?’ the commander asked.

  ‘Wine
for Tomis, copper ore for Gorgippia,’ Sarpax replied.

  ‘Twenty silver owls,’ the other man demanded. ‘Tax.’

  ‘Tax on the open sea?’ Sarpax sounded outraged.

  ‘Tax for our suppression of piracy,’ the other returned. ‘Pay, or I’ll sink you.’

  Playing the injured merchant, Sarpax cursed. ‘You’re the only pirate I see here!’

  The other man laughed. ‘Pay up, little cock.’ Melitta heard his feet moving. ‘We’re looking for a man – twenty to twenty-five years old, tall, dark-haired. Goes by the name of Satyrus. Seen him?’

  Sarpax laughed. ‘What, walking on the sea?’

  The other man did not laugh. ‘Satyrus of Alexandria. Know the name?’

  ‘Of course I do. What of it?’

  ‘Seen him?’ the other man pressed.

  His tone had changed. Melitta felt something stir in her chest, something as profound as the urges of her body. They were looking for her brother. That meant they didn’t have him!

  ‘Last year at Rhodos. Listen, Trierarch – I’m a poor man with my way to make. Here’s your tax. Can we go?’

  Melitta could hear his booted feet on the narrow plank that ran between the oar benches. ‘Where’s this cargo? Gods, this is a smelly scow you have here.’

  ‘Wine’s in the ballast. Copper pigs are the ballast.’ Sarpax sounded too confident, as far as Melitta was concerned.

  ‘What’s in the bow, then?’ the other man asked, and Melitta could hear his steps coming closer.

  ‘Barley and cheese for the lads,’ Sarpax said.

  ‘And whatever you put aboard for your private trade, you sly-minded Tyrian. A little purple dye? Some ostrich eggs?’ He laughed. ‘Open it!’

  Melitta put an arrow on her bow. By the light of the scuttle, she saw Nihmu do the same.

  ‘I’d rather not,’ Sarpax said. ‘It won’t be good for you, either.’

  ‘Was that a threat, you dirty fucker? Get it open, right now, and I won’t put my boot up your arse.’ The other man put his hand on the hatch. Melitta could see it move.

  ‘I’m just so worried about an – attack!’ Sarpax said, and the door opened.

  Melitta shot the boarder from the length of her forearm, and her shaft went in under his arm where he’d pushed on the hatch. Nihmu’s slipped into his right eye.

  Before she had her second arrow on the string, all the marines were dead or pushed over the side, and Idomeneus was up on the rail, shooting down into the Wasp’s cockpit, the command centre of the enemy ship. Unlike Auntie Nihmu, Melitta had been in a sea fight and she knew Idomeneus. She ran along the deck, avoided slipping in all the blood and stepped past the rowers – the benches were clearing as they all surged up, swords and javelins ready for action, over the rail. Tunny lay lower in the water than her opponent, but the difference wasn’t enough to deter boarding.

  ‘Just like old times!’ Idomeneus said. He shot again.

  Melitta couldn’t pick a target – the enemy deck was full of men, and most of them were bare-backed oarsmen – her own.

  ‘We’re done here,’ Idomeneus agreed. He looked at Nihmu, who drew to her ear and lofted a long shot at a man on the stern – an enemy archer. He fell into the sea.

  ‘Nice shot!’ Idomeneus said.

  It was the last blow of the action. The enemy rowers were paid men – perhaps pressed, perhaps slaves – and they didn’t rise from their benches. The Tunny’s men cleared the cockpit in no time.

  Coenus came back aboard, his sword dry, but a big smile on his face. ‘Master Sarpax, you are now owner of that trireme.’

  Sarpax was standing on the rail next to Melitta. ‘What the fuck do we do with him?’ he asked. ‘I’m a fucking Rhodian – I can’t bear to kill the rowers and sink him.’

  Melitta felt the milk starting. As the daimon of combat fled her body, she felt all the irritations flood back, but she still had room for a smile. ‘I have an idea,’ she said. Inside her head, she was rejoicing, because Satyrus was alive.

  Two days later, a military trireme slipped on to the beach south of Gorgippia near the Temple of Herakles. It caused a certain consternation at the temple until Melitta jumped over the side and ran all the way up the beach and up the steps. The same old priestess greeted her with open arms. The cataracts in her eyes showed her to be quite blind, but she smiled and embraced Melitta tightly. ‘The god told me you would come,’ she said. ‘Eumeles hunts your brother everywhere since the battle.’

  Melitta laughed. ‘Eumeles’ days are numbered,’ she said.

  Down on the beach, Nihmu clambered over the side and walked up the shingle until she had dirt and leaves underfoot. She waved her bow at Melitta and Melitta waved back. Then the Sakje woman fell on her knees and kissed the ground, and let forth a war cry that echoed off the ship and the walls of the temple.

  ‘A Sakje!’ the old woman said. ‘Once, they used to come here. It has been many years.’ She ran a hand over Melitta’s face. ‘You are a mother!’ she said. ‘Where is your child? A boy?’

  Melitta smiled. ‘Back in Alexandria,’ she said. ‘The milk still runs. But I had to save my brother.’

  ‘Let us go in and see the will of the god,’ the old seeress said. ‘Your brother is in his care – one hero to another. But it is good you came.’ She leaned on Melitta’s shoulder and gestured to an attendant, a pretty young girl. ‘Lissa can get a tisane for the milk in your breasts. What else do you need? I look forward to playing my part in repaying Eumeles. He has been a hard master to the people here.’

  ‘Horses,’ said Nihmu, who had quickly made her way up from the beach. She smiled as she said it. ‘The smell here is the smell of home! I can smell the grass! Horses, reverend lady, and we will be gone.’

  The old priestess sniffed. ‘You took all my best horses last time,’ she said. Then she shook her head. ‘Oh, the demands of the young – and the gods. I’ll have horses fetched.’

  A day later, they were mounted, in Sakje clothes, their gorytoi by their sides, riding across the first blades of the sea of grass. Behind them, Coenus pulled in his stallion to wave at Sarpax, who paused in his stream of orders to unmoor the Wasp to wave back.

  ‘I may never go to sea again,’ Nihmu said with a laugh. ‘Oh, I pray that Leon is well – but I am happy to be back on the grass!’

  ‘Where to, Nihmu?’ Coenus asked. They were at the top of a long ridge that ran east into the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains. North and east, the plains rolled away beneath their feet to the river, and again beyond the ferry. A cold wind blew from the north, rippling the grass and making them shiver.

  Melitta pulled her fur cap down over her ears. ‘North?’

  Nihmu shook her head. ‘North and east – to the high ground between the Tanais and the Rha.’

  ‘That’s where the bandits live!’ Melitta said.

  ‘That’s where we will find Ataelus,’ Nihmu said. ‘He is the bandit now.’

  NEAR TOMIS, EARLY WINTER, 311 BC

  The countryside was empty – not a man moved, no one picked the ripe apples or trampled the grapes. Word of the atrocity at Penelope’s farm must have spread quickly.

  Satyrus moved warily from hayrick to byre. Twice he found other men hiding – both times he moved on with a nod. There was smoke on the air and he stayed away from the road after he saw a column of two dozen men in armour. His mind closed to thought, he slipped along the coast, south, until he crossed a rocky headland and was able to look down into the harbour. Three triremes on the beach and the Lotus anchored in twenty feet of water, moored fore and aft to the breakwater. He lay there for an hour, watching it all, and watching the soldiers in the town, his gut roiling. Then he began the trek back up the coast.

  Near nightfall, he heard dogs. He climbed over a low headland near the cursed farm and down into the icy water, and then swam around the point and on down the beach as far as he could stand before muscle spasms and chills drove him ashore. When he landed, the baying of the dogs was far behin
d. He set to gathering driftwood. He got together a bundle, wrapped it in his girdle and carried it with him as he walked in the surf up the beach, going north in the last light as fast as he could manage. He ran when he was cold and walked when he was tired, thankful for the stew he’d had the night before – stew he’d eaten with people now dead because of him. Like Xenophon and Philokles and all the men who’d fallen at Gaza and the girl in the meadow—

  ‘Stop it,’ he said aloud.

  Show your gods who you really are, Philokles said at his elbow.

  Satyrus smiled, wondering how tired he was. Or fevered. There were red lines on his arm that scared him.

  But he felt better immediately.

  At full dark, Satyrus sat on the beach and set to building a fire. The dogs were two headlands behind him, their barking lost in the dark. Black Falcon would be close, unless he was going to miss his rendezvous altogether. Not worth thinking about that.

  He got the fire lit with dry lichen and sparks from the pyrites in his kit and thanked Herakles that it had not rained. He couldn’t have started a fire with wet wood. He lacked the practice.

  After the first fire, the second was easy. He gathered wood and poured it on, gathered more and started his third fire, made sure that they were in an even line across the beach. Now he could hear the dogs again.

  With his fires going, he sat on the dry sand and cleaned his sword and his lonche, polishing the blades carefully with the fine sand by firelight, his concentration so complete that he almost missed the looming bulk of the Falcon as he rounded the point.

  He left the fires burning, dived into the surf and swam the half-stade to his ship.

  Theron’s strong arm helped him up the side. ‘You look like shit,’ he said.

  ‘Due south for Tomis,’ Satyrus barked to Diokles. He met Theron’s eyes in the light of the ship’s lamp.